Posts Tagged ‘add smartdns to a router’

UK TV Catch-Up for Expats – OVERPLAY comp.

Having moved to France, we still miss some of what UK TV has to offer and want to catch-up on missed episodes of the soaps and other TV. Due to geographical barriers and restrictions, this can been a challenge!!

With the rise of on-demand streaming, tablets and smartphones, we now use the internet more than ever before but streaming I-player and other catch-up TV seems to be an impossible challenge for Expats – until now!

After large amounts of internet research, we have discovered that it is possible to watch these catch-up services using a couple of very clever web companies. We had to piece it together rather than the info being one place, so thought a summary would help!!

Catch-Up UK TV – how to set up

We have had a Samsung smart TV for 6 months now and have been running this solution for over 6 months without fail!

Firstly, Smart DNS, offered by companies such a OverPlay.net allows a simple router or device configuration change. We recommend doing this at ROUTER level so any device accessing the internet router goes through the Smart DNS. This is a great offering for our ski chalet clients!

SmartDNS replicates many of the traditional VPN features, but without the compromise of speed loss. It permits access to restricted websites in different countries without even having to dial a VPN connection. You can make changes on your device, but we suggest all the changes are done at router level so you can just browse as normal without changing all of your device settings.

For Smart DNS to run smoothly it requires a stable IP address. We couldn’t understand why our access kept stopping and our IP address kept changing. It turns out that some internet providers change your IP address monthly, daily or even hourly. If this is the case, then the Smart DNS service will need to be logged in to continuously ensure an uninterrupted service. The way around it is to use a service such as “no-ip“ which can update your authorized SmartDNS address automatically by monitoring for changes to your IP address. Amazing really!!

So it is a simple 2 website process to get UK TV catch up – SMART DNS and NO-IP – see the links below for the services we used.